{"id":7143,"date":"2017-08-14T08:48:01","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T14:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=7143"},"modified":"2017-08-14T08:48:01","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T14:48:01","slug":"white-nationalists-antifa-car-killers-three-separate-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/08\/white-nationalists-antifa-car-killers-three-separate-issues.html","title":{"rendered":"White nationalists, antifa, and car-killers: three separate issues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"A<\/p>\n

I want to say a few words about our discourse around the events in Charlottesville, which has now become a simplistic rhetoric of \u201cdestroy the Nazis,\u201d which is not very helpful, because there are three separate issues which we really should discuss separately.<\/p>\n

First, there are white nationalists<\/strong> \u2013 white supremacists \u2013 neo-Nazis \u2013 call them what you will, who have arrived at the opinion that they have the support of Donald Trump. \u00a0(Note that I don\u2019t use the label \u201cAlt-Right\u201d which is extremely unhelpful in that it implies that these are just \u201cnormal\u201d people on the political right.) \u00a0They use the language of identity politics, claiming that what they care about is simply being sure that their ethnic group, whites, gets its fair share in the fight of identity groups for shares of benefits, political influence, cultural patrimony, etc.<\/p>\n

And if that were all it was, well, there would be some basis for honest conversations about whether identity politics and \u201cyou [white people] are going to die out and we [brown people] will take over\u201d is a dangerous game to play. \u00a0(I briefly raised this post-election<\/a> but didn\u2019t get very far.)<\/p>\n

But Sean Patrick Nielsen, the creep interviewed by the Washington Post in their video clip? \u00a0He\u2019s just a racist. \u00a0The people posting on 4chan (from my brief foray onto that site) still buy into conspiracy theories that the Jews control everything (though to be honest, I couldn\u2019t make much sense out of the site, in general).<\/p>\n

Which means that this isn\u2019t a matter of equivalence or what-about-ism. \u00a0This isn\u2019t about the rally; it\u2019s about the beliefs that these groups hold. \u00a0Whether or not there are other bad people in the world, these beliefs don\u2019t belong in America in 2017.<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s not as simple as that: what about the people who hold these beliefs? \u00a0These are not immigrants who we can imagine deporting to \u201cwhere they came from.\u201d \u00a0We can\u2019t wish them away. \u00a0We also can\u2019t send them to Room 101<\/a> to re-educate them. \u00a0There are calls on facebook and twitter for every participant in the Unite the Right rally to be identified and fired from their jobs, which has now happened in one reported instance<\/a>. \u00a0But right now, America seems united in the desire to respond to hate with hate.<\/p>\n

Second is the question of violence at rallies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is not the same issue.<\/p>\n

Yes, in this case, the white nationalists were ready for a fight, though I have not seen any news reporting on the question of \u201cwho threw the first punch,\u201d but it is the Antifa, the Black Bloc, which has been instigating\u00a0brawls, starting fires, looting, etc., repeatedly, not just at white nationalist rallies but at more generic pro-Trump demonstrations or marches, or in the case of right-wing speakers at places such as Berkeley or the like.<\/p>\n

Violence at demonstrations, either by demonstrators or counter-demonstrators, did not happen for the first time at Charlottesville. \u00a0It\u2019s been going on for a while, and there\u2019s been a passive acceptance of this by police and government officials who either don\u2019t have the resources to put a stop to it, or are to worried about being accused of running a \u201cpolice state,\u201d where they\u2019re more worried about the negative press of police in riot gear than of people smashing store windows or even people\u2019s heads.<\/p>\n

Remember the Tea Party? \u00a0Remember that they were accused of being racist, on top of being extremist? \u00a0Yeah, was there violence at Tea Party rallies? \u00a0I think not.<\/p>\n

The violence at rallies has to stop, and it has to be stopped<\/strong>. \u00a0 I don\u2019t think there are any \u201cleaders\u201d of the Antifa movement who can be prevailed upon to stop the violence because they exist to be violent. \u00a0The white supremacist groups? \u00a0I don\u2019t know; they are claiming to be the victims of the Antifa but hardly seem willing to prove their nonviolent intentions by not fighting back.<\/p>\n

In the case of Charlottesville, there are complaints<\/a> that the police failed to do their job. \u00a0As the Tribune reports,<\/p>\n

Cable news replayed a seemingly endless loop of the early violence at Emancipation Park, where police in riot gear had surrounded the expanse on three sides, though seemed to watch as groups beat each other with sticks and bludgeoned one another with shields. Many on both sides came dressed for battle, with helmets and chemical irritants.<\/p>\n

Police appeared at one point to retreat and then watch the beatings before eventually moving in to end the free-for-all, make arrests and tend the injured. The governor declared a state of emergency around 11 a.m. and activated the National Guard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole point is to have overwhelming force so that people don\u2019t get the idea they can do these kinds of things and get away with it,\u201d said Charles Ramsey, who headed both the District of Columbia and Philadelphia police departments. Demonstrators and counter demonstrators \u201cneed to be in sight and sound of each other but somebody has to be in between,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s usually the police.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, the white nationalists claim that the police inaction was intentional, wanting to allow fights to begin to give them an excuse to cancel the rally.<\/p>\n

The third issue is that of the car-killer. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is, again, not something that can be lumped in with\u00a0the general violence at the rally or the white nationalist beliefs. \u00a0We know that the driver, a James Fields, espoused Nazi ideology on his facebook page. \u00a0We also know that his father was killed before he was born, his mother was a paraplegic, he was separated from the army after 4 months, reportedly because he takes antipsychotic medication. \u00a0(Some of these details are here<\/a>; others I can\u2019t find a convenient link to at the moment.)<\/p>\n

Yes, we can\u2019t sweep racism-motivated violence under the rug. \u00a0But we also don\u2019t have a tradition of ideology-motivated suicide-killing in the United States, or in the West in general. \u00a0Bombings, yes, but not suicide bombings.<\/p>\n

My browsing of 4chan (though, again, I\u2019m not sure that I was looking in the right places), found a mix of reactions to this event. \u00a0Some said, \u201cgood riddance to leftist [people],\u201d others said \u201che must have been framed,\u201d and others posited theories that he was just trapped, Reginald Denny-style, and didn\u2019t want to be attacked by the protesters. \u00a0\u201cIf the brake is lit, you must acquit,\u201d they wrote, because of the claim that he had braked, which proves that he didn\u2019t intend to kill anyone.<\/p>\n

So far as I can tell, these theories are nothing other than wild wishful thinking. \u00a0But at the same time, what Fields did was, well, irrational. \u00a0There is no way he could imagine that he would be able to ram into people, reverse, leave the scene, and go on with his day, is there? \u00a0Was this an impulse, done so quickly that he didn\u2019t think about the fact that he\u2019d be in jail? \u00a0Was he in fact genuinely mentally ill? \u00a0It\u2019s hard to believe that this was premeditated, which means that, no, we can\u2019t just put this into the same \u201cvehicle terrorism\u201d bucket as in Nice. \u00a0We can\u2019t use this instance as a way to try to prove a point about Islamist-inspired terrorism being no big deal. \u00a0But at the same time, the manner in which our justice system operates, and the nature of human beings, will mean that we likely won\u2019t really know what was going on in his head; we\u2019ll just hear the stories that his lawyers and the prosecutors want to tell, and even that, possibly not even for years, and only if the media\u00a0cares to report it.<\/p>\n

Having said that, it\u2019s not unreasonable to ask whether the white nationalists are to blame for getting Fields riled up, and, if so, how we should respond in turn. \u00a0But are we willing to apply the same rules when it\u2019s an anti-Trump Democrat killing congressmen playing baseball?<\/p>\n

Again: \u00a0three separate issues.<\/p>\n

And now, it\u2019s time to log in and start work. \u00a0Happy Monday, all.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0A Munich Neonazi demonstration, from Wikipedia, https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/b\/be\/Neonazi_2.4.2005_M%C3%BCnchen_2.jpg<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to say a few words about our discourse around the events in Charlottesville, which has now become a simplistic rhetoric of \u201cdestroy the Nazis,\u201d which is not very helpful, because there are three separate issues which we really should discuss separately. First, there are white nationalists \u2013 white supremacists \u2013 neo-Nazis \u2013 call […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":7133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[718,495,45,353,715],"class_list":["post-7143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-4chan","tag-identity-politics","tag-racism","tag-terrorism","tag-white-nationalists"],"yoast_head":"\nWhite nationalists, antifa, and car-killers: three separate issues<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I want to say a few words about our discourse around the events in Charlottesville, which has now become a simplistic rhetoric of "destroy the Nazis,"\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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